Yes, I remember that particular bottle with the typed label from the Sotheby’s Drouhin sale. The typed in date bothered me at the time (as I’ve never seen another one on 1945 Romanee-Conti), but I verified that it came directly from Drouhin as you see it and that they acquired it directly from the domaine as one of their distributors at that time. So, yes, that appears to be authentic.
But there are a couple of bottles in the Acker catalog that I saw which, based on the photos, are highly suspect in my opinion.
1978 Jayer Richebourg (Acker Lot 3410) - The label printing appears to be photocopied. (I owned 1978 Richebourg bought on release). There is obvious glue all around the vintage tag and Macon medal label. I wouldn’t touch this.
1923 La Tache (Nicolas bottled) allegedly from Liger-Belair (Acker Lot 3154). The introduction claims that Acker compared an empty bottle found at the Chateau du Vosne Romanee and found them identical. The catalog description makes no claims at all other than “bsl, tl, outstanding color and condition.” (Gee, where have I heard that description before for ancient bottles from Acker?)
in 1923, the firm was known as C. Marey & Comte Liger-Belair. (The Marey family owned Liiger-Belair.) Their labels stated “C. Marey & Cte. Liger-Belair”. They had a distinct label. On the left side was a shield with armor helmet above it, on the right was different shield with a crown above it. I have seen many exemplars of their 1923s from different appellations, including one bottle of alleged 1923 La Tache offered by Bruun-Rasmussen auction. See below.
One interesting wrinkle is that in 1923, La Tache was a Monopole owned by C. Marey & Cte. Liger-Belair. Romanee Conti owned Le Gaudichots, which under the rules of the time could be sold as Le Gaudichots or as La Tache. After the family patriarch died in 1931, many of the C. Marey vineyards were sold in 1933, including La Tache. DRC bought their C. Marey La Tache vineyards. Near the same time DRC won a court case to be able merge its La Gaudichots vineyards into La Tache. Thereafter, all but three non-contiguous plots of Gaudichots considered to be only 1er level vines became part of La Tache under DRC’s ownership.
The 1923 La Romanee in the Acker catalog is allegedly from Nicholas. It is substantially identical to two bottles of alleged Nicolas-bottled 1923 La Tache previously sold by Acker which I believe to be counterfeits that were produced by Rudy Kurniawan and were sold to the two consignors by Rudy – Eric Greenberg (Golden Cellar Auction Lot 1094) and Robert Rosania (Acker April 25, 2008 auction – yes the auction where Rudy and Acker got caught selling counterfeit Ponsot (and Roumier and Rousseau). Both Mr. Greenberg and Mr. Rosania bought large quantities of wine from Rudy allegedly from the Nicolas cellars.
1923 La Tache (Nicolas-alleged Liger-Belair). Note the Rudy Kurniawan press-on Reserve Nicolas labels next to the capsule. We saw thousands of those stickers that were produced as evidence in Rudy’s trial.
1923 La Tache (Nicolas) with different Nicolas strip label from Golden Cellar. This was also a label used by Rudy of which there a large number introduced as exhibits in Rudy’s trial.
The bottles previously sold by Acker from Rosania and Greenberg, as well as the bottle in Lot 3154 all say “Appellation Controlee.” But there was no appellation controllee law in effect until 1936. Could the Nicolas bottles offered by Acker all have been labeled with an Appellation Controlee label sometime after 1936? Perhaps. But in addition to the above problems, the bottle in Lost 3154 has massive amounts of glue smeared onto the bottle around the main label and around the 1923 vintage label. These were glued on by someone, but were not originally applied in that manner.